Culture and Psychoanalysis  Human suffering often may stem from the way that the culture promotes the pursuit of impossible ideals and unlimited narcissistic gratification that serves an unacknowledged economic purpose benefiting some members of society at the cost of others... Advertising fans the flames of widespread and insatiable narcissistic... See more

On Darwin's influence of Psychoanalysis

We can no longer operate on the assumption that the Western capitalist culture of self-contained individualism is superior to all other cultural forms and continue to encode those values in the practice of psychoanalysis.

A traditional ego-psychology analysis typically focuses on analyzing the patient’s inner life as the main source of problems. In contrast, a relational analyst emphasizes not only the patient’s inner life, but also the mutual relational dynamics of the therapeutic interaction in the session.

Geertz (1973) argues that the Enlightenment view of human nature placed such an overbearing emphasis on universal characteristics that it relegated the differential effects of culture to secondary status.

Arguably, liberal individualism, social Darwinism, and free-market theory are transforms of one another, deriving their basic assumptions from the same atomistic and hierarchical worldview, all containing elitist principles (meritocracy, survival of the fittest, and plutocracy) and all with the consequent stratifications of race, gender, ethnicity,... See more

Psychological-mindedness (the propensity to take responsibility for one’s problems and to look within oneself for the solutions) is considered by many to be an important criterion for analyzability. Historically, these criteria have operated to exclude many who might otherwise have seemed to be potential beneficiaries of psychoanalytic treatment.... See more

Psychoanalysis is profoundly influenced by and in turn influences the social, economic, cultural, and political contexts in which it is practiced. Although created as a therapy for individual suffering, psychoanalysis has also always contained important implications for the progressive development of a more humane society and has defined its cures... See more

Freud’s thinking was also influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution, which emphasized individual organisms’ competitive struggle for survival.